Dear Mr Cornwell,
I’ve just finished re-reading the Warlord Chronicles and have been no less moved by the ending a second time around. Thanks for writing such great books!
Did Merlin really teach Nimue what he understood to be magic, or just his tricks? Did he know he was a charlatan, deep down? I think so, and that is what stayed his hand at Maiden Castle. He knew the son of Arthur wasn’t worth a conjuring trick. He knew the gods wouldn’t arrive. How to use the weather as an omen. As she kills Merlin, she points to the west with his staff – just as Merlin had instructed (taught) Derfel to do when they were besieged on Anglesey.
All that said, though, I really want to believe in Merlins last enchantment, and I tell myself that I do – I choose to believe that Prydwan did sail for Avalon, and that Arthur survived his wounds. I shun reason, which would say that the mist was yet another coincidence, and that the boat most probably sank somewhere in the channel, taking all on board with it.
It seems to me that while the Britons were awaiting the arrival of the Gods, they were ignoring the fact that a pantheon of powerful gods HAD arrived in Britain. Not Christ or Isis, Beltain or Mithras – But Arthur and Derfel, Galahad and Sagramor, Lancelot and Guinevere. All were variously as powerful, influential, capricious and flawed as any pantheon. Arthur certainly has many messianic qualities, and Derfel is as just and true as any God or hero in mythology. Indeed, I don’t believe he ever broke a single oath, except of course his oath to Nimue – which I don’t think he couldn’t rightly keep any longer.
Derfel kept his oath to serve Samsun until his dying day; I think it would be fitting if his final duty – to guard the monastery at Dinnewrac against the Saxons or other intruders, bearing Hywelbane one last time – was how he achieved sainthood. This would be ahistorical of course, as the ‘real’ Saint Defel supposedly died of natural causes.
Anyway, I found a copy of Harlequin the other day so I think I’ll give that series a go! I have no doubt I’ll enjoy it as much as your other work.
James